Galley slave
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A galley slave was a
In the ancient Mediterranean, galley rowers were mostly free men, and slaves were used as rowers when manpower was in high demand. In the
History
Ancient Mediterranean navies relied on professional rowers to man their galleys. Slaves were seldom used except in times of pressing manpower demands or extreme emergency.
Only in the
Naval forces from both Christian and Muslim countries often turned prisoners of war into galley-slaves. Thus, at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, 12,000 Christian galley slaves were freed from the Ottoman Turks.[4]
The Knights Hospitaller made use of galley slaves and debtors (Italian: buonavoglie) to row their galleys during their rule over the Maltese Islands.[5]
In 1622, Saint Vincent de Paul, as a former slave himself (in Tunis), became chaplain to the galleys and ministered to the galley slaves.[6]
In 1687 the governor of
King
Convict rowers also went to a large number of other French and non-French cities:
All French convicts continued to use the name
A vivid account of the life of galley-slaves in France appears in
Madame de Sevigne, a revered French author, wrote from Paris on April 10, 1671 (Letter VII): "I went to walk at Vincennes, en Troche* and by the way met with a string of galley-slaves ; they were going to Marseilles, and will be there in about a month. Nothing could have been surer than this mode of conveyance, but another thought came into my head, which was to go with them myself. There was one Duval among them, who appeared to be a convertible man. You will see them when they come in, and I suppose you would have been agreeably surprised to have seen me in the midst of the crowd of women that accompany them."
Galley-slaves lived in unsavoury conditions, so even though some sentences prescribed a restricted number of years, most rowers would eventually die, even if they survived the conditions, shipwreck and slaughter or torture at the hands of enemies or of pirates. Additionally, nobody ensured that prisoners were freed after completing their sentences. As a result, imprisonment for 10 years could in reality mean imprisonment for life because nobody except the prisoner would either notice or care.[citation needed]
Notable galley slaves in Europe
Africa
The Barbary pirates of the 16th to 19th centuries used galley slaves, often captured Europeans from Italy or Spain. The Ottoman Sultan in Istanbul also used galley slaves.[7]
Notable galley slaves in North Africa
Asia
In
In fiction
A short account of his ten years as a galley-slave is given by the character Farrabesche in "The Village Rector" by Honoré de Balzac. He is sentenced to the galleys as a result of his life as a "chauffeur" (in this case the word refers to a brigand who threatened landowners by roasting them).
In one of his ill-fated adventures, Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote[9] frees a row of prisoners sent to the galleys, including Ginés de Pasamonte. The prisoners, however, beat him.[10] (Cervantes himself had been captured in 1575 and served as a galley slave in Algiers for five years before he was ransomed).[11]
In The Sea Hawk,[12] a 1919 historical fiction novel by Rafael Sabatini, as well as the 1924 film based on the novel, the protagonist, Sir Oliver Tressilian, is sold into galley slavery by a relative.
The Sea Hawk (1940) was originally intended to be a new version of the Sabatini novel, but the studio switched to a story whose protagonist, Geoffrey Thorpe, was loosely based on Sir Francis Drake, although Drake was never a galley slave. Howard Koch was working on the script when war broke out in Europe, and the final story deliberately draws vivid parallels between Spain and the Nazi Reich. The existence of galley slaves and the misery they endure is set up as a metaphor for life under the Reich. When Thorpe (Errol Flynn) liberates a Spanish vessel full of English captives, the freed men row willingly for home to "Strike for the Shores of Dover", [13] the stirring music of score composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold and lyrics by Howard Koch and Jack Scholl. The first verse "Pull on the oars! Freedom is yours! Strike for the shores of Dover!" evoked the recent evacuation from Dunkirk.[14] The sets in the 1940 film appear historically accurate.
In Lew Wallace's novel, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, Judah is sent to the galleys as a murderer but manages to survive a shipwreck and save the fleet leader, who frees and adopts him. Both films based on the novel—Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925) and Ben-Hur (1959)—perpetuate the historically inaccurate image of Roman galley slaves.
In the 1943 epic novel The Long Ships, the protagonist, Orm Tostesson, is captured while raiding in Andalusia and serves as a galley slave for a number of years.
The 1947 French film Monsieur Vincent shows Saint Vincent de Paul taking the place of a weakened slave at his oar.
C. S. Forester wrote of an encounter with Spanish galleys in Mr. Midshipman Hornblower when the becalmed British fleet is attacked off Gibraltar by galleys. The author writes of the stench emanating from these galleys due to each carrying two hundred condemned prisoners chained permanently to the rowing benches.
Patrick O'Brian wrote of encounters with galleys in the Mediterranean in Master and Commander emphasising the galley's speed and manoeuvrability compared to sailing ships when there was little wind.
In Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, Jean Valjean was a galley prisoner, and was in danger of returning to the galleys. Police inspector Javert's father was also a galley prisoner.
Robert E. Howard transplanted the institute of galley slavery to his mythical Hyborian Age, depicting Conan the Barbarian as organizing a rebellion of galley slaves who kill the crew, take over the ship and make him their captain in one novel (Conan the Conqueror serialized in Weird Tales 1935-1936).
In Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea series, multiple references are made to galley slaves; in The Farthest Shore specifically, Prince Arren is rescued from captivity, and notes the galley slaves imprisoned with him on the ship.
Notes
- ^ Casson 1966, p. 35
- ^ a b Libourel 1973, p. 117f.
- ^ Sargent 1927, pp. 266–268; Ruschenbusch 1979, pp. 106 & 110
- ^ Patrick 2007, pp. 718
- ^ Grima, Joseph F. (2001). "The Rowers on the Order's Galleys (c. 1600-1650)" (PDF). Melita Historica. 13 (2): 113–126. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-04-16. Retrieved 2018-02-18.
- ^ Digital Commons. De Paul University [dead link]
- ISBN 1-84176-409-4.
- ISBN 9789971692421.
- ^ Several editions of the book Don Quixote are available for free on Project Gutenberg.
- ^ "Chapter XXII (22) of Don Quixote". Online Literature.
- ^ "Miguel de Cervantes | Biography, Books, Plays, & Facts". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2020-02-13.
- ^ The novel The Sea Hawk is available free of charge on Project Gutenberg.
- ^ Strike for the Shores of Dover is available in many YouTube postings.
- ^ "The Sea Hawk (1940)". tcm.com. Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved 2020-02-13.
References
- Casson, Lionel (1966), "Galley Slaves", Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, vol. 97, pp. 35–44
- Graham, A. J. (1992), "Thucydides 7.13.2 and the Crews of Athenian Triremes", Transactions of the American Philological Association, vol. 122, pp. 257–270
- Hunt, Peter (2001), "The Slaves and Generals of Arginusae", American Journal of Philology, vol. 122, pp. 359–380
- Libourel, Jan M. (1973), "Galley Slaves in the Second Punic War", Classical Philology, vol. 68, no. 2, pp. 116–119
- Patrick, James (2007), "Renaissance and Reformation", Vol., vol. 7, p. 718
- Ruschenbusch, Eberhard (1979), "Zur Besatzung athenischer Trieren", Historia, vol. 28, pp. 106–110
- Sargent, Rachel L. (1927), "The Use of Slaves by the Athenians in Warfare", Classical Philology, vol. 22, no. 3, pp. 264–279
Further reading
- Bamford, Paul W., Fighting ships and prisons : the Mediterranean Galleys of France in the Age of Louis XIV. Cambridge University Press, London. 1974. ISBN 0-8166-0655-2
- James, Simon (2001), "The Roman Galley Slave: Ben-Hur and the Birth of a Factoid", Public Archaeology 2, 35-49
- Marteilhe, Jean (2010). Galley slave : the autobiography of a Protestant condemned to the French galleys. Barnsley: Seaforth. ISBN 978-1848320703.